


Imperative

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris and Barry's reaction to what happened in E2</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperative

Barry had been late for their movie night. He had had some problem with a meta-human and by the time he got to Iris’ apartment it was past midnight. They had been so good in keeping the reinstalled friday-movie-night for the past three weeks though that she didn’t have it in her to point out that it wasn’t friday anymore when he opened her door. And now Barry was sleeping on her sofa to the second half of  _All the President’s Men_ , and Iris was miserably failing to pay attention to Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (this was really not a movie for when feeling sleepy), concentrating on brushing Barry’s messy hair. He had obviously run to her place with it still wet from the shower because it had dried in a nest of tangles that she was delicately combing through with her fingers now.

When she looked back at the screen and noticed she had missed her favourite line of the movie,  _“follow every lead, every lead goes somewhere”_ , even though there wasn’t much left to the end she turned her TV off. 

She stood still, quiet, watching his breathing and for what it felt like the millionth time that last week Iris tried to imagine what it would be like. To be married to Barry. To kiss him, and touch him in whatever way she would like to. To go to bed to him, his lips slightly parted, mumbling nonsense in his sleep like he had always done, to wake up to him and his warmth and his pretty smile. 

Sometimes she convinced herself it wouldn’t be all that different, they had lived together all the while they were growing up and if you manage to go through puberty under the same roof there’s not much you can’t face together. She knew pretty much everything there was to know about him, more than that, she had been there with him, and Barry was easy most of the time. It didn’t take much to make him happy, just like it didn’t take much for him to make her happy. She would be completely content in spend every friday watching movies with him for the rest of her life. 

But other times the prospect of how everything would change, how just one kiss would turn things upside down, how it would be something she would never be able to take back because she would forever look at him with the knowledge of how he tasted like, would completely overwhelm her.

Ever since he told her about her doppelgänger being married to his one in another earth (not that he had voluntarily offered the information, it took some nodding and probing from her, and some time too. Two weeks to be exact, time, Iris had figured, he needed to wrap his head around it), it had been hunting her. It wasn’t just about some different timeline, one that Eobard hadn’t meddled in, it wasn’t just about some changeable and distant future, it was a different Earth as well. 

Soulmate was a word that had been floating around her head constantly ever since he told her, but every time she had shaken it off, that made less sense than another timeline or another earth. People weren’t destined to anything, we still could choose our path, our choices mattered. It would be so much more scary living in a world where they didn’t. 

She imagined that little piece of information must have been hunting him as well. He was trying not to show but she could tell how he was avoiding touching her at any cost, stumbling on walls and doorways so to put distance between them, avoiding looking at her in the eyes, avoiding telling her what that had felt like, to see that mirror, to imagine himself in that place. The fact that his head was in her lap right now was a fluke, only made possible by the fact that he was sleeping. 

She considered leaving him in her sofa for the night but ended up taking pity in his feet hanging off of it. She traced his lips with the pad of her ring finger, his soft lips, the warm breath coming out of it prickling her skin, and her heart was suddenly at her throat. She was left wondering how she had been able to ignore all this wanting inside of her, because now it enveloped her, filling all of her senses. Like touching him was imperative. Preferably just above his hips, where the hem of his t-shirt, hold out of place by the friction with the sofa’s cushions, revealed right now. The pale, smooth looking skin that she knew it would be warm under her fingers, under her lips.

She took one deep breath, searching for control, before calling him;   

“Barry?”

He sat up hastily to that, saying;

“I’m watching, I’m watching.”

She couldn’t help the fond smile. This dork.

“You are sleeping there’s like 45 minutes.”

“What?”, he looked at her a little offended and Iris figured he really did believe he was just closing his eyes; “No, I’m not.”

“Come on”, she said, getting to her feet, pulling him by the arm, and getting completely disappointed by the fact he did not move one inch; “you should go to bed.”

“Can I just crash here? I don’t feel like running anywhere.”

“Barry, you don’t really fit in my couch.”

“No”, he whined, eyes closed; “I can’t run.”

She knew he would say no, but she didn’t want him to wake up to a screwed up spine for staying in her couch, and being completely honest she didn’t want him to leave either, so she offered;

“How about walk? 20 steps? That’s doable, right?”

“20 steps?”, he looked up from under his eyelashes (his stupidly long eyelashes, which wasn’t even fair, he was a boy he didn’t need them to be that long) to her, standing in front of the couch where he was still siting, an unreadable expression on his face and she thought maybe, with his sleep working on her side she would get him to stay. 

Even though she couldn’t really understand why she wanted it so much. Or why the constant nagging fear that even if he still loved her, even if they manage it, this thing between them, that something, life, would end up denying her that.  

“To my bed”, she explained; “I don’t even think it’s 20. More like 10 steps, but I’ve never counted and you’ve got much bigger legs than I do.”

“Are you sure?”, he asked, his eyes big at her now. She nodded but he didn’t seemed convinced causing her to add;

“Yeah, come on.”

* * *

Barry was watching Iris sleep. For how long exactly he had lost count. Last night he was already back deep in slumber before his head actually hit the pillow but now he could appreciate her short pyjamas, her legs, half over half under the blanket, the soft looking skin, the swell of her bun, the top slightly out of place, reviling the little mark she had above her right boob, her lips slightly parted, and the whole room that smelled like its owner was doing no favours to the foggy state of his brain.

He could barely look at her this days, not without giving it away, not without remembering everything he had lived with someone other than her. It had felt like Iris though. His Iris. Like a real life dream. It had been years since he had last dreamt they were married, but they were always a bit like that, not all good, dreams are usually weird, but the feeling he would get in his lungs of being married to her, that was always something he wanted to go back to dream for.

Now, ever since he had been back that had been his standard. Every dream he remembered having she was his wife, and he could touch her, and she would touch him back, pushing him against walls and he could kiss back freely, put his hands on her back, on her arms on the nape of her neck, bring her closer, smell her in till his world was nothing but Iris. And then he would wake up to the same disappointment he had felt all those years, and to the same guilt of having those dreams without her allowing them, the guilt of being incapable to tell her he had kissed her before, this her and another her. Of having to live with the taste of her lips ghosting him. God he was fucked. There would be no recovering from it. Ever.

Barry saw Iris’ eyelids fluttering open and pretended to be asleep as well. No one wants a creep watching you sleep. He sensed her turning on her back, staring at the ceiling for a moment and he couldn’t help but look, opening his eyes against his resolute. And she noticed, he knew she did because there was no way he was the only one feeling something electric between them. He was expecting a “good morning” or a “hello”, instead she turned to face him and asked;

“Do you believe in destiny?”

“No”, and he really didn’t. One thing he had learned out of this was that things change even when you moved the smallest piece out of place, everything had bigger, snowballed, consequences and it was why he was so afraid that they would never be, that he had lost his only chance.

“You don’t?”

“Iris”, he took a steading breath; “I know it can be a lot to, I don’t know, understand, I guess, I don’t have the answer more than you do, but things can be so different I don’t believe there’s anything truly predeterminate.”

“So we just happened to be — together — in a different timeline and in a different world?”, she looked unconvinced, unimpressed.

“No, I do think we’re connected somehow, Iris. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It’s still a choice.”, she closed her eyes to it. If he was being honest he didn’t have a choice on whether or not he loved her. Sometimes he wished he did, sometimes he had wished for it to stop but then, how could he not love her? He never truly wanted to let go. He just wanted things to be simpler. It wasn’t the same as wishing she didn’t make him feel the way she did. The way she had always done.

“Is it?” she questioned, her lids still shut.

“Yeah.”

“Cause it doesn’t feel like it”, she opened her eyes, shaking her head and there were some tears fighting their way out of it, but she resisted them. “I mean I’ve been thinking about that, about — us. I tried to imagine how it would like to be with you.”

“You did?”

Iris had this capability of filling his lungs with something that felt like warm water. Of making it impossibly hard to breath. He often thought she would make him pleasantly drown. She sat up before continuing;

“And then I tried to imagine how it would be like to not be with you. When I thought about marrying someone else — even Eddie — I didn’t really want it, I wanted to want it but I didn’t. And then I also thought about you marrying someone else, like Patty or some other girl and I — I felt sick, like nauseated, like cold all over, and it wasn’t even real.”

“Iris”, he sat beside her, reaching for her hands. He couldn’t ever marry someone else. It was one thing dating them, it was another this kind of commitment. It would feel like cheating. The girl, whoever she would be, Iris, and himself. Cheating the three of them out of content, of true happiness. 

She was the one avoiding his eyes now. He intertwined their fingers more to comfort himself than her if he was being completely honest. It was like facing his decisions. If he hadn’t decided to date Patty in the first place her doubts would’t be that strong right now, if he hadn’t taken everything back after that Christmas, out of pure fear, she would trust him, and maybe they would have been. 

Not that it would ever really matter. Even if there was no choice he wouldn’t choose anyone else. If it was destiny he wanted  _her_  to be his destiny, that was still choosing somehow.

“Even if you are right I would still choose you. Every version of me would choose you.”

She shook her head. He could hear her, in her teenager high pitched voice somehow, telling him  _Don’t be silly, Bear._  Instead she said;

“That makes no sense, Barry. If you don’t have a choice you can’t choose.”

“Well, I choose you, because no one makes me feel the way you do. And believe me I have felt the bad too, the sick and the cold and completely heart broken, but that’s nothing compared to the good, I would still choose you. Always. I don’t want you to just… give in, though. If that’s not what you want I’ll still be here anyway.”

“Not like that, I mean, you won’t wait, right?”

He didn’t remember ever seeing her this vulnerable.

“I’ll wait if you want me to wait, I’ll wait for as long as you want me to.”

“I want you to wait.”

“Ok.”

He didn’t know that yet but he wouldn’t have to wait for long. He would finally tell her about the kisses in the next week and that would lift some of the weight holding him down. Then one Saturday morning he would be making them coffee and Iris would silently sneak into the kitchen, press him against her (their? maybe their) cupboard and kiss him, better than the tsunami kiss, better than anything he would have tried in his life, and she would end it with a  _holy shit_ that he would find rather appropriate, and his hands would pull her from the ground, searching for a surface where he could place her —who knew kitchen sinks had the exact perfect height for it? — and then proceed to find their way up her bare thighs, but as for now he was willing to wait for as long as she wanted him to. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr iriswestthings


End file.
